The Wall Street Journal revised its website privacy policy on Tuesday to allow the site to connect personally identifiable information with Web browsing data without user consent.
Julia Angwin of The Journal writes, “Previously, the Journal’s privacy policy stated that it would obtain ‘express affirmative consent’ to combine personal data with ‘click stream information’ culled from the website.
“The company said that combining the two types of data would ‘allow us to provide customized Wall Street Journal service information to our users,’ said Alisa Bowen, general manager of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. ‘It is not being applied retrospectively and only applies going forward to new registered users and subscribers.’
“The change is part of a larger effort by the Journal to streamline and simplify privacy policies across its network of websites, which include WSJ.com, Marketwatch.com, AllthingD.com, Barrons.com and SmartMoney.com.
“The new privacy policy applies to all the websites in the Wall Street Journal Digital Network. It contains expanded disclosures of online tracking techniques and contains links to opt-outs from third party tracking networks. It also adds a disclosure that it collects mobile device IDs. The company says that it only shares the mobile identifiers with companies that provide internal analytics.”
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